Coordination with Communications Agencies

The VIP client usually has a regular communications agency covering their business, sports or artistic activities. When the criminal crisis erupts, that agency can be an asset or a risk depending on coordination. The criminal law firm assuming the defense must integrate quickly with the preexisting agency, set clear protocols and shield professional secrecy without losing communicative agility.

Why Coordinate and Not Just Hire

The temptation, in the middle of a crisis, is to resolve communication separately: let the agency "handle the press" while the firm "handles the court". It is precisely the error that causes the most damage. Uncoordinated communication may contradict the procedural line of defense, anticipate assessments of the facts that later limit the legal margin and, in the worst case, inadvertently provide the prosecution with evidence: a public statement by the client or their circle that is citable in court. Coordinating does not mean that the criminal lawyer controls the style of the statements, but that no message goes out without having passed the filter of its procedural impact. Communication is a piece of the defense strategy, not a parallel process.

Legal Framework of Coordination

The communications agency does not enjoy its own professional secrecy, so it may be called as a witness and its communications seized. Protection is built contractually: reinforced NDA extending the secrecy duty, agency integration under firm direction (which does have professional secrecy) and, where appropriate, hiring the agency by the firm itself (not directly by the client) to reinforce confidentiality. This limit should be kept in mind at all times: what is shared with the agency lacks the protection that does cover the lawyer-client communication.

Roles and Responsibilities

The rule is simple: defense sets what can be said; the agency decides how and when to say it. Any public message —statement, interview, social media post— goes through review and approval by the lead criminal lawyer. The agency contributes media sensitivity, knowledge of outlets and execution capacity; the criminal lawyer contributes legal certainty and procedural shielding. The inversion of this rule —letting the communicative criterion prevail over the legal one— is a recurrent source of problems.

Shared and Reserved Information

The guiding principle is that of minimum necessary information. The agency should know only what is essential to carry out its work, but not the full procedural strategy or all the facts of the case. We draw an explicit border between the shared information (the public position, the approved messages, the foreseeable calendar) and the reserved information (the defense strategy, the weaknesses of the case, the content of proceedings under secrecy). This segregation protects the client in a double sense: it limits the damage if the agency is called as a witness and reduces the risk of leaks, voluntary or not.

Effective Working Model

In practice, the model is organized around a few routines. A single point of contact on each side avoids the dispersion of instructions. A message approval protocol, with short response times, allows reaction in hours without skipping the legal filter. Clear social media rules —client silence during the process except for coordinated statements— prevent an emotional message from eroding the position. And a regular coordination cadence keeps the two strategies aligned as the proceedings evolve. The result is an agile but safe communication, capable of protecting the reputation without compromising the defense.